


Chloe Decker's Life

by ElenaCee



Series: Devil's Trap [23]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Religious Content, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 04:24:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16548848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElenaCee/pseuds/ElenaCee
Summary: This is Chloe Decker's life now.





	Chloe Decker's Life

**Author's Note:**

> A brief respite before we head into the next life-changing event in Chloe's life.
> 
> As always, thank you so much, one and all, for reading the previous bits, for liking them, for giving me kudos and awesome comments that I'm so deplorably remiss in replying to. I hope you like this bit as well.

She became aware of herself and her place in the universe.

Lying on a soft surface (Lucifer’s bed), covered by something warm and silken (his duvet), surrounded by darkness (it was probably what’s so funnily called “the dead of night” am). Someone (Lucifer!) could be heard breathing quietly next to her.

Smiling to herself, Chloe opened her eyes to gaze up at what little she could see of the ceiling in the near darkness, feeling happy with life, the universe, and everything.

Then, turning her head towards the sleeping Devil next to her, she realized that she was witnessing a crime in progress.

Lucifer was lying a bit apart from her, swathed in his part of the duvet, curled up on his side facing her, eyes closed, relaxed, beautiful, inviting. And yet, no one was touching him. No one was caressing him, letting him feel how much he, the Devil, was loved. Specifically, _she_ wasn’t.

A most heinous crime, indeed. Something she should rectify immediately.

She announced her intention with a soft humming noise and could literally see the lines of his blanket-covered body relax even more as soon as the sound reached him. Then she scooted closer and very carefully placed her arm so her hand came to rest on the warm skin of his neck, with her thumb lying on his artfully stubbled cheek.

He sighed, breathing out through his nose, and hummed in response. But he didn’t stir; the rhythm of his breathing didn’t change.

For a few minutes, she kept her hand there, her fingers very gently stroking his cheek and the back of his neck, enjoying the warmth and softness of his skin, the slight roughness of his stubble, and the feel of his even breaths brushing her arm.

 _There,_ she thought at him. _Can you feel this? You’re not alone. You’re loved. Let this make up at least a little bit for all the loneliness you suffered for so long. I know it’s not much. I’m sorry I can’t do this for you all the time, forever._

Sleep beckoned her, but she kept going. He had been bereft of touch for so long, and it was such a small sacrifice for her to make. If it helped even a little bit, how could she stop?

Then the texture of his skin under her fingertips changed, and the bristles disappeared. This had happened before, so often in fact, that she didn’t even need to look at him to know what had happened. She looked, anyway. He had unconsciously shifted to his true form. She liked to think she knew why he did it without realizing, literally in his sleep - to better feel her touch, to be able to feel her caresses on his true skin.

Two seconds later, he woke up, his red Devil eyes blinking open to glow softly at her in the near darkness.

She went on caressing him. “I love you, Lucifer,” she whispered, and very gently kissed his temple. “I will always love you.”

He blinked. His mouth opened to say something, but he let the air out again unused.

She kissed him again, way past the point where she needed to hear him say it. “I know.”

Her fingertips kept softly stroking the uneven surface of his burned skin, and he blinked, then arched into her caress, his mouth falling open in a soundless moan. After a bit of this, he made a noise half groan and half sob; his wings came out with a soft plopping sound, and he wrapped them and his arms and legs around her, one of his hands cradling her head against him.

She knew exactly how he felt, and she did the same; holding his precious head close so she could feel him and his warmth and his breaths and his skin and his feathers against her and revel in the fact that this was her life now - he existed, and so did she, here, now, with him, both of them together.

 

* * *

 

_This was Chloe Decker’s life now:_

Waking up with the Devil in her bed, which lead to delicious early morning sex; getting excellent coffee served in bed, followed by a five star breakfast out on the balcony; getting complimented for her looks while receiving honest if sarcastic critique about her choice of wardrobe; routinely wearing an angel feather pendant and an engagement ring at least partly not of this world; getting the third degree from her daughter about whether or not she and Lucifer finally had ‘made her a sibling’ the night before; and finally, arriving windswept and on time at the precinct, no matter how congested the roads, because “these wings are not just for show, my love, and life’s too short to be stuck in traffic”.

Of course, her life also was suffused with other kinds of manifestations of Luciferness. In this particular case, those involved finding the balls of the Newton’s Cradle on her desk adorned with smiley faces done in permanent marker - both the outermost balls smiling, while the balls in the middle frowned unhappily.

“You happen to know anything about this?” she asked the Devil, who was - and this had always been her life - patently _not_ helping with paperwork.

Instead of giving her his innocent face as she’d come to expect, he smiled proudly. “Indeed I do,” he said, practically preening.

When nothing more was forthcoming, she prompted, “Lucifer, why are there smiling faces on these things?”

“I’m working on understanding the finer points of emotion. It was Dr. Linda’ idea, actually.” He reached out to grab one of the smiling balls and let it fall back in place, whereupon it clicked the other smiling face on the other end of the line away, with the frowning faces in the middle not moving. “See?”

Chloe didn’t, so she tried again. “Why did Linda tell you to draw smiling faces on my desk ornament?”

“She didn’t.” And there was the expression of innocence she’d been waiting for.

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Glad we cleared that up. I’ll go back my original question, then. Why did you draw smiling faces on my desk ornament?”

The eternal twelve-year-old giggled, clearly enjoying this. “I told you - to learn understand human emotions.”

This would go on like that for at least half an hour if she didn’t change her tactics. “Care to elaborate?”

By way of response, he set the Newton’s Cradle in motion again. _Click. Click._ “I thought I’d try my hand at tackling compassion. That one’s always been a bit tricky for me. I mean, I barely know how _I_ feel. How’m I supposed to even guess how _someone else_ feels?”

She supposed he had a point. She also privately thought that he’d made enormous progress, which made his present shenanigans so incongruous. But as she watched the cradle click and the happy balls bounce away from the frowning ones, she was possibly maybe beginning to get a nebulous idea of what it was he was saying.

“So,” Lucifer went on, “since humans are way too complicated to wrap my head around, I decided to try something simple. Like put myself in the place of these guys. What do they feel? Or would, if they had feelings? Much easier than for humans, or for Celestial beings, for that matter, to guess. All these things do in their existence is hang from a string and bounce occasionally, or, as the case may be for the majority of them, not bounce at all. So, it stands to reason that the balls that can bounce are happy, and the others are not. I mean, can you imagine? Being put on this earth to do one thing and then not be able to do even that because of physics, while the guy next to you gets to have all the fun?”

She had to admit that it did make sense, once you put yourself in Lucifer’s head putting himself into the ‘heads’ of balls on a string. Actually, it made a whole lot of sense.

And this entire thing was adorable in a way that only the Devil could be.

“Wow,” Dan’s voice commented from next to her.

Chloe grinned. “Imagine being around him twenty-four seven.”

Dan shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I mean that’s actually quite brilliant, in a Lucifer kind of way. Who’d’a thunk?”

Lucifer looked from her to Dan and back again. “What? Tell me you don’t like playing with Newton’s balls.”

Chloe tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress her smile. Giving up, she patted the Devil’s arm. “I love you,” she said helplessly.

His gaze softened. “So you keep telling me, to my neverending amazement.” Dropping the mood as fast as he’d picked it up, he fondled two of the frowny-faced metal balls suggestively. “I think I know exactly how _they’re_ feeling now. Think Dr. Linda will approve?”

 

* * *

 

_This was also Chloe Decker’s life:_

“Forget it. I’m _not_ wearing white. I’m a mother.”

“So?”

“White is for virgins. And as sexy as it would no doubt look, you shouldn’t be wearing a white tux, either. You’re the antithesis of innocent.”

“Oh, thank you very much. How about we both wear blood red, then? Or, Hell Red, as the case may be?”

“I think pink is traditional for a bride who’s no longer a virgin.”

“Right. So, what’s traditional for a Devil who hasn’t been a virgin since before the fall of mankind?”

 

* * *

 

_And so was this:_

“Chloe Decker, I beg you to renounce Satan before it’s too late!”

She glared at the parson - a real one, this time, not a street preacher - and folded her arms, while next to her, in his seat opposite the parson in the interrogation room, the selfsame Satan grinned his most toothy grin. “Okay, clearly you know who I am, and who this is.” She nodded at her partner. “But you’re not distracting me from my questions like that, Father. Where were you between six and ten this morning?”

“But you’re consorting with --”

“She knows exactly who she’s consorting with, Padre,” Lucifer interrupted in his most snakelike and oily manner. “Twice this morning, and, hopefully, again tonight.”

She refused to blush. “Lucifer. That’s private. So, where were you, Father?”

“You’re in league with the Evil One! He’s contaminating your body, your very soul! Aren’t you worried about the afterlife?”

“Uh, no,” Lucifer began, grinning, but Chloe put her hand on his arm, and he shut up immediately, like he always did.

“Father,” she said patiently, “there’s no reason --”

“And you’re even wearing his ring!” the holy man fairly screeched, interrupting her.

She raised her hand off Lucifer’s arm to watch the Hell-red ruby catch the light. “So I am. Proudly and unapologetically. Which brings us back to your whereabouts this morning --”

“You’ll be defiling the holy act of matrimony, making a mockery of it! I cannot condone --”

“Then don’t,” she interrupted him for a change, also intercepting Lucifer and his probable quip about acts. “I don’t care, Father. You’ve expressed your concerns, I don’t agree, end of story. Besides, Lucifer’s Father’s okay with it, so who are you to give me this kind of crap?”

The parson's eyes opened wide. “Lucifer’s….”

“Oh, yes.”

“That’s - that’s blasphemy!”

“Oh, for Dad’s sake,” Lucifer interjected, leaning forward. “Besides soliciting your misguided notions where they’re not wanted or needed, what is it you desire most in this world?”

 

* * *

 

_And this:_

“Hail Satan!”

“Oh bloody hell,” Lucifer muttered, “not them again.”

The cry was picked up as more passers-by spotted them. “Hail Satan!”

Chloe looked around the crowded sidewalk, but there was no way to sneak out of here undetected, except, she supposed, by flight. And wasn’t it saying something that this was an option she’d come to consider as a matter of course?

“Sorry, my love,” Lucifer said in his most demure manner, that is, not very. “I’m afraid there will have to be a spectacle.”

She sighed resignedly. “Knock yourself out, then.”

“Right,” Lucifer said, raising his voice, “listen up, you lot, ‘cause I’m only gonna say this once! You there, in the back, pay attention.” He jumped up a convenient bollard to tower even more over everyone and clapped his hands. “Gather ‘round and listen up! Yes, hello. It’s me, Lucifer, The Morning Star, Satan, Prince of Darkness, Beelzebub, Belial, The Adversary, The Lightbringer, Old Scratch, and so on and so forth.”

His voice echoed off the walls, probably, Chloe supposed, with the aid of some supernatural mojo. All around them, every hand in evidence was holding up a cell phone.

Lucifer gave the impromptu crowd his most devilish grin as he was balancing on the bollard with the ease of one who is at home in the mercurial currents of the air. “And I herewith speak this unto you misguided creatures for the record: There will be no more hailing me. That’s it. You got that? Stop bloody hailing me. I’m not a ship. I’m not an aeroplane. Hailing frequencies are closed and shall remain closed until you’ve all calmed down again. Yes, I’m walking among you - not for the first time, mind - but that doesn’t mean I’m available to join your rituals. I’m not dropping by for a quick sacrifice of bloody chicken, or whatever it is you’re on about. So stop it. Stop hailing me, and stop dragging me into your human affairs. Are we clear?”

There was some discordant muttering.

“I can’t hear you!” From the reaction of the crowd, Chloe guessed that he’d been flashing them the Eyes.

This prompted various variations on the general theme of “understood”.

Lucifer nodded. “See that you remember, because so will I. And do tag me when any of you upload this to Wobble.”

 

* * *

 

_And this, too:_

“Detective Decker, I hope you’re using protection.”

Looking up from her wrap-up of the preacher case, she found a young officer standing in front of her desk, fresh-faced and clearly not long out of the Academy, and tried not to take offense. “And why would you say that, Officer uh -” she peered at the girl’s name tag - “Hopkins?”

The young beat cop eyed her belligerently. “Because you’ll bring the Apocalypse down on us if you don’t and something happens, that’s why.”

“Oh boy,” Chloe muttered. She put both palms on her desk and rose. “All right. A, it’s none of your business, and B, this whole Antichrist thing, it’s a boatload of nonsense.”

Officer Hopkins scoffed. “I suppose _he_ told you that.”

“Well, yes, actually.”

Her eyes opened wide and sincere. “He’s lying to you! It’s what he does! He lies and deceives and will do everything in his power to bring about the downfall of mankind! Don’t listen to him! Get away from him as fast and as far as possible!”

“Oh boy,” Chloe repeated. “Look, Ms Hopkins -”

“Pamela.”

“Pamela. I’m Chloe. How about we go grab a coffee, and you can tell me more?”

As they made for the precinct kitchen, Pamela kept craning her neck. “Is… is he here? I wouldn’t want to run into him, you know.”

“No, I sent him home. He’s probably strategizing dinner as we speak.” Chloe couldn’t suppress a small smile at that. For Lucifer, cooking was _serious business._

The young cop looked relieved. “Oh, thank God.”

Chloe winced at that. Then, noticing what she’d done, she grinned at her own reaction, mentally went ‘what the hell’ and silently added the inevitable pun about rubbing off, in Lucifer’s voice, even. _We’re clearly spending a lot of time together, he and I._

“Wait. He makes you dinner?” Pamela asked, wide-eyed, her tirade temporarily derailed by Chloe’s off-hand comment.

“Hmhm. His cooking’s divine, pun intended.”

“Uh….”

“We practically live together. We’re having a friend and one of his brothers and his son over tonight, in fact.”

“Uh…. Really? His… brother?”

Chloe gave her two seconds to put that one together, then went on cheerfully, “Yeah, Sachiel. My daughter loves him. She’ll be there as well, of course. In fact, it’s entirely possible that the rest of Lucifer’s siblings will gate-crash. You know, Michael, Amenadiel, Azrael, Raphael. No concept of privacy, those angels.”

This was met with a resounding and slightly panicky silence. Finally, Pamela managed, “... Angels?”

“Hmhm. Yep. Archangels, in fact. They love hanging out together. Sorry, you were saying?”

“I….” Pamela gestured helplessly. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Not at all,” Chloe said, turning serious. “Lucifer’s the Devil, yes, but you know what that means? It means that other things are true as well. Not all of them, right. But angels exist. Heaven and Hell exist. God exists. And Lucifer used to be His favorite son. And he never lies.”

“But --”

“Never, Pamela. Do yourself a favor and meet him.”

“Meet the Devil? No! He’ll corrupt me, like he corrupted you!”

Chloe suppressed an urge to groan.

“And all this talk about angels can’t be true, either,” Pamela went on.

“Oh boy. Okay, let’s make a deal.”

The young cop’s eyes did yet another saucer impression. “You’re even talking like him! I’m not making a deal with you! He’s acting through you, forcing you to act on his behalf, can’t you see that?”

Chloe smiled and tried another track. “Well. If you know the first thing about the Devil, it’s that he’s big on free will, right?”

“Uh, yeah? Except when he tempts us into corruption and damnation.”

“The only thing he’ll tempt me with tonight is his excellent food. And quite probably mind-blowing sex later.”

“Ugh.”

Chloe back-pedaled. That had clearly been TMI. “Forget that last bit, what I’m trying to say is, forcing me or anyone else to do his will is anathema to him.”

That earned her a dubious look. “It’s even worse if you do the Devil’s bidding of your own free will, you know. And the matter of the Antichrist is still on the table.”

This was clearly going to take longer, Chloe realized. Longer, at least, than her coffee break was supposed to last.

Pamela made a funny noise. “I thought MacMillan was having me on about the literal Devil working with Homicide when I started here, but now I’m finding out that, not only is it true, but everyone seems to be okay with it! It’s like I’ve walked into a Twilight episode! Do none of you realize what it all means? Am I the only sane person left?!”

“Everything okay in here?” came Ella’s cheerful voice, followed by the forensic scientist’s bubbly self.

“Fine, Ella,” Chloe said, grateful for the respite.

“Good, great.” Ella noticed Pamela, and her smile got even wider. “Hi, I’m Ella, Lopez, nice to meet you!” Whereupon the young cop was engulfed in an Ella hug.

“P-Pamela Hopkins.”

Ella released her to beam at her. “You’re the new girl from the Academy, right? We gotta have a chat soon! Oh, before I forget, Chloe, are we still on for tonight?”

Chloe smiled. Ella’s personality was infectious. “Lucifer’s already doing the cooking.”

“Awesome! Anyway, gotta rush, you know how it is, see ya later, it was good meeting you, Pamela!” And before anyone else could say anything, she was gone again.

“Right!” Chloe said brightly. “Ella.” She pointed vaguely in the direction the scientist had disappeared to. “Very eager to meet an actual angel.”

“Um, wait.” Pamela had lost her look of religious fervor and assumed a thoughtful expression instead. “The Devil and… angels?”

“His siblings, yeah. Lucifer’s a fallen angel. You did know that, right?”

“Of course I knew that. But… shouldn’t they be fighting each other?”

“Like, good versus evil?” Chloe grinned. “Been there, done that. They’ve reconciled. It’s been ages, after all. No family feud should last a literal eternity.”

“Family.” Pamela said the word as if tasting it. “I… suppose I never thought it about it like that.” She gave Chloe a shy look. “I don’t have any family left, so I turned to faith instead. I’m very active in our community. The thought that the Devil, actual Satan, is roaming the earth freely is frightening.”

Chloe nodded. “I understand completely.”

“But no matter who I talk to in the precinct, nobody seems to mind! And you all seem so nice, I can’t imagine that you’ve all been corrupted by him.” She sighed. “Then again, that is the way of the Beast, isn’t it? It comes to you in its most beautiful guise, uses your weaknesses against you….”

“To do what?” Chloe asked seriously. “What do you think he’s up to?”

“To buy or steal your soul, of course. Over a deal. That he’ll rig, by lying and deceiving, so he’ll win.”

Chloe looked at her, at her young, fair-skinned, earnest face. Fresh out of the academy, twenty-one, twenty-two at the outside, no family. Her uniform was spic-and-span, down to the shine of her boots; her short auburn hair was nearly cropped to military regulation length; no makeup, short nails, and a lean, athletic figure. Pamela clearly put her career first. And, while Police Academy graduates didn’t really get a say about which precinct they would be assigned to, she hadn’t transfered right out again, despite learning that this was where the Devil worked. That spoke of no little strength of will.

She reminded Chloe at little bit of herself, sixteen years ago.

“Well,” she said, “he’s not interested in humans’ souls. That’s just old wives’ tales that somehow made it into the cultural subconscious.” _Like the goat thing,_ she didn’t add out loud.

“And to bring about the Apocalypse,” Pamela added.

“Okay, why would he do that?” She let the question hang for a bit. “He’s just made himself a home here, a family. He likes earth, he likes us humans, he likes being up here. As a matter of fact, why would God want it all to end?”

“God,” Pamela repeated weakly.

Chloe’s phone pinged a text message. “Excuse me,” she said, pulling it out.

_My little brother and his spawn are here already. Can you play hooky, before the food’s all gone? L._

Chloe looked up at Pamela. “Look,” she said, “I know how you feel. I’ve been where you are now, in more ways than one. Let me give you some advice. If you want to make it as a cop, try to let go of assumptions and preconceived notions. Those will always hold you back. Keep an open mind. And remember this: You can’t learn what you think you already know.”

 

* * *

 

_And, thank Lucifer’s Dad, this was also Chloe Decker’s life:_

Sitting on the settee in Lucifer’s penthouse, barefoot, legs folded underneath her, with Lucifer’s arm around her shoulder and snuggled into his warmth, while at the bar, forensic scientist Ella Lopez was giggling and joking with Sachiel, the Covering of God, and Sach’s son Ephraim was struggling with some beginner’s piece at Lucifer’s piano while Trixie looked on, wide-eyed. All around them, bowls and platters and empty plates bore silent witness to the feast they’d had, though alcohol and fruit punch were still flowing freely. From the looks Lucifer kept giving her and the soft touches of his hand on her nape, sleep wasn’t in the cards even after their guests had left, and if her own hand kept wandering where it shouldn’t, she was blaming the honeyed whisky she’d had entirely.

Then the balcony door opened from outside to admit Amenadiel, who was carrying a bowl and wearing a broad grin, and someone put some music on, and the party clearly had only just begun.

And, surrounded by friends and family, with her Devil never far away, Chloe wouldn’t have it any other way.


End file.
